The Morning Star – Olive Morris: Forgotten activist hero

Olive Morris: Forgotten activist hero By Lizzie Cocker
29 October, 2009 — The Morning Star Online

Introducing an inspirational civil rights campaigner whose life and work offer important lessons for the left

In an age when xenophobia and Islamophobia are being stoked by illegal wars and immigration myths, the need to wrench hidden realities from history in order to see today’s truths has never been more urgent.

And thanks to the Remembering Olive Collective (ROC) founded in 2008, a bit of this history became available to the public last week at the Lambeth Archives in Brixton, south London.

Olive Morris, despite her awe-inspiring short life, remains virtually unknown. And she is one of the greatest unsung heroes I have ever come across.

My encounter with Morris began when a friend switched on my radar for forgotten female protagonists. He mentioned a local project he was doing on four practically unheard-of women activists who left in their wake cultural, social and political improvements which are enjoyed not just in London but in some instances internationally.

Three of these women were black.

With my radar on standby, I stumbled across a website which asked me if I “remember Olive Morris?” above a picture of a young black woman smiling with her shades on behind a megaphone.

No, I thought. I had never heard of Olive Morris.

And as I investigated further it became apparent that my ignorance was widespread.

Morris died aged just 27 in the 1970s. But she had such an unshakeable impact on those who knew her that many of the people with memories, documents, photographs and letters relating to this young woman responded to ROC’s calls to make her story a matter of public record.

As a tireless campaigner for black women, a socialist and an internationalist, Morris dedicated herself to fighting injustice wherever she saw it.

One of the most vivid examples was in 1969 when police arrested a Nigerian diplomat in Brixton as he stepped out of his Mercedes.

The police were so stunned to see a black man with such a flashy car that their reflex was to treat him as a criminal who had stolen it.

Crowds gathered round gaping as the police began to beat him.

A 17-year-old Olive struggled through the spectators and physically tried to stop the attack.

She was flung down and subjected to black police boots kicking her in her breasts. She was stripped naked and told as the blows kept on coming: “This is the right colour for your body.”

One Nigerian student wrote in tribute to her upon her death: “It is reasonable to expect that Olive Morris’s heroism will be immortalised alongside such black luminaries like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and many others who were proud to be black.”

But despite this ROC found while putting the jigsaw of her life story together that this woman remained only in the memories of those whose lives had crossed hers.

So vivid were the memories that these pieces of the jigsaw have now found an eternal home in the archives.

As I hungrily sifted through them trying to complete my own puzzle, it was Morris’s typewritten words that climbed out of the papers desperate to deliver the answers for problems we continue to face today.

A graduate in social sciences from Manchester University, Morris wrote numerous essays on Marxism, race and class. As a Brixton Black Panther, part and parcel of her membership was to attend lessons in Leninism and Marxism.

This education and her own activism influenced her relationship with progressive movements and she ultimately became frustrated with the British left, which she described as having “more in common with the ruling class and royalty than with fellow workers.

“Today increasingly the British working class is faced with a choice either to defend the ‘national interest’ or throw their lot in with the oppressed people of the Third World.

“The most immediate way in which this can be done is for them to support the struggle of the Third World people in this country,” she argued.

Morris sympathised with Trinidadian activist Claudia Jones who was poorly treated by the Communist Party, which failed to acknowledge her far-reaching capabilities and consigned her to an administrative role, and Grunwick striker Jayaben Desai who was virtually abandoned by trade unions.

She became disillusioned by institutions for the working class, which instinctively she would have had the most natural allegiance with.

“We have used the great British tradition of trade unionism to try and further our cause for equality and justice, but on countless occasions we have found that the movement does one thing for white workers and another for black workers,” said Morris.

“White workers have time and time again refused to give our unions recognition, they have crossed our picket lines for racist reasons, they have organised against our organisation in the trade unions.

“Take for instance STC (Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd) where white trade unionists and union officials – with exception of a few – put skin colour before the overall interest of the proletariat and often resorted to physical violence against their black fellow workers.”

Morris was exasperated by what she saw as an inherent self-interest that blocked mainly white apparently progressive groups from seeing where the real battles needed to be fought. She lambasted the Anti Nazi League “trendies” for busying themselves with “shouting their empty phrase of ‘black and white unite and fight’.”

Empty, she said, “because there was no sound basis on which such unity could be built.”

The ANL, she continued, has “become one big carnival jamboree of political confusion for the middle class.

“It doesn’t raise the political questions. It buries them in the name of ‘broadness’.”

Morris highlighted that the National Front, which the ANL directed all its enthusiasm into fighting, was merely a symptom and not a cause of the racist ideologies and practices which prevailed in every sector of society.

As the black groups Morris worked with organised to fight oppression on all levels – running supplementary schools, clubs and recreational facilities, clubbing together to buy houses, striking, organising pickets and circulating petitions – she urged people truly dedicated to fighting racism to confront the issues which affect black people’s lives on a daily basis in schools, the police, local government and even trade unions.

“Not a single problem associated with racialism, unemployment, police violence and homelessness can be settled by ‘rocking’ against the fascists, the police or the army,” she said.

“The fight against racism and fascism is completely bound up with the fight to overthrow capitalism, the system that breeds both.”

The symptomatic BNP and other far-right organisations are rearing their ugly heads above the fertile ground laid by a political framework which has perpetuated the criminalisation, social immobility and isolation of black and ethnic minorities.

But black history has a lesson for the left.

As long as support is only forthcoming when racism is so visible that it can no longer be ignored rather than being part of the daily battles against all discrimination that permeates society, the struggle to create equal conditions for everyone will keep taking one step forward and 10 steps back.

To get a glimpse into the rest of Olive’s life visit rememberolivemorris.wordpress.com or visit the collection at the Lambeth Archives in the Minet Library, 52 Knatchbull Road, London SE5 9QY.

Olive Elaine Morris
Born in 1952 in Jamaica and moved with her family to Britain aged nine
Died of cancer in 1979
Travelled to China, north Africa, Ireland and Spain
A council building in Lambeth bears her name
Groups she cofounded or worked with:
The Black Panther Movement (later the Black Workers Group),
Brixton Black Women’s Group
The Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent
Manchester Black Womens Co-operative
National Co-ordinating Committee of Overseas Students
Black Womens Mutual Aid Group
Brixton Law Centre
The squatter movement

BBC London – Olive Morris Collection Launch

An article by Sheila Ruiz (ROC member) about the launch of the Olive Morris Collection appeared on BBC London website on Friday 16 October 2009. Click here to read the whole article.

If you are not a Lambeth resident and you were born after the 1970s, you will probably not have come across the name of Olive Morris before.

If, on the other hand, you are an adult living in Brixton, you will most likely remember – or will have heard of – this important, local historical figure.

Now, everyone will have the opportunity to find out much more.

Olive Morris’ story will soon be made publicly available through the Olive Morris Collection at Lambeth Archives.

Olive featured on the Brixton pound (B£) note

As part of its drive to encourage and sustain local businesses, a group in Brixton have launched the neighbourhood’s own currency. Olive’s image is featured on the £1 and seems to be the note most media outlets highlight as representative of the spirit of the B£ project.

The Brixton pound (B£) can be purchased in £1, £5, £10, and £20 denominations and used at local participating businesses ranging from music shops to dance studios to food shops.

For information about exchanging sterling for B£ or becoming a trader accepting the B£, see the group’s website.

Further coverage of the B£’s launch and a range of perspectives on local currency/consumerism-as-activism, see the following links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/20/brixton-pound-local-currency

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/09/19/the-pounds-of-brixton-115875-21684869/

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/09/17/brixton-launches-its-own-local-currency/

http://transitionculture.org/2009/09/18/brixton-pound-launch-a-fantastic-success/

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gv8caOd_8QHuZ0NB90KgPPq7T_sA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/16/will-brixton-pound-work

http://blog.thoughtomatic.co.uk/?p=343

Femlist blog – Olive Morris Collection launch

The forthcoming Olive Morris Collection launch was announced in an article at Femlist blog on 12 October 2009. Click here to read full article.

After many months of research and interviewing those who knew Olive, the Remembering Olive Collective and Lambeth Archives are proud to be launching a public archive dedicated to Olive Morris and the different groups and campaigns she was part of. The collection includes Olive’s personal papers deposited by Liz Obi and over 20 oral history interviews. It will be permanently hosted at Lambeth Archives.

The Black Panthers in London, 1967-72

The Black Panthers in London, 1967-72: A Diasporic Struggle Navigates the Black Atlantic
copyright: Anne-Marie Angelo 2009
This essay appears in our blog courtesy of the author. A PDF version of the full essay can be downloaded here for reading and reference, but please contact the author if you would like to republish it.

Abstract

A group of West African and West Indian immigrants in London identified themselves as the British Black Power Movement from September 1967 to April 1968 and as the British Black Panther Movement from 1968 to 1972. As the first Black Panther Movement to form independently outside the U.S., the British Panthers took aspects of their symbols, chants, and demands from the U.S. Panthers. The UK Panthers appropriated the U.S.Panthers’ revolutionary aesthetic as a model for protest, for necessary violence, and for engaging with the state. Using cultural history methodologies of both U.S. and British history, this article serves as the first indepth study of the Black Panthers in the U.K. and contributes to a nascent field of transnational studies of the Black Panther Party. In this article, I analyze the nature of the confrontations between Panthers and London City Police in court files from the yea 1970-72 and a collection of Panther political essays.

The article demonstrates how the U.K. Panthers adapted American Black Power in order to suit a transnational, yet also local struggle. The US Panthers provided an appropriable ideology through visible cultural markers that melded with the legacy of West Indian radicalism to create a fluid, albeit short-lived, U.K. Black Panther Movement. The well traveled “routes” of the Black Atlantic allowed the British context to be the first site where an international Panther group emerged.

Olive’s early activist intervention

An early incident in Olive Morris’ political awakening begins to demonstrate how she was, as her brother Errol Morris characterized her “a people’s person.” The common folklore states that on 15 November 1969 Olive, at the age of 17, intervened when the police arrested “a black man driving a nice car” on the streets of Brixton. Olive appears  disheveled here in a photograph taken at King’s College Hospital after her arrest. Her shirt is soiled, her face swollen.

The story of her arrest and the photograph circulate as evidence of Olive’s willingness to step into the fray and to do so boldly.

In a major newspaper’s report on the incident, the man driving the nice car was, in fact, named as Clement Gomwalk, a diplomat with the Nigerian High Commission who’d illegally parked his Mercedes in a “no waiting” zone while he and his wife did some shopping. The report goes on to note that six people, not solely Olive, were arrested and charged with “assault on police, threatening behavior, and possessing offensive weapons.”

As the newspaper later reports on Olive’s sentencing, “During the melee Miss Morris kicked a police officer and hit him on the jaw.” Olive’s handwriting on the reverse of the photo tells a different story, not related in the newspaper account: “Taken at about 10pm on 15th Nov 69 after the police had beaten me up.”

She received a suspended three-year jail sentence that was later reduced to one-year suspended.

The details of this event as it have come to signal Olive’s entry into activism with police abuses of the community being a key feature. Correcting the record to note that she did not, in fact, act alone, doesn’t detract from her bravery in intervening, but instead recasts Olive as an instigator of change. However, one gets the sense from her later activism that Olive didn’t seem to care whether people followed her or not. Commenting on Olive at ROC’s “Creation and Liberation: Black Panthers in Brixton” event, Brixton community activist Elaine Holness, who knew Olive said, she “didn’t mess around” and expected those in struggle with her to “hold the line and deliver.” Whether one of six people protesting an arrest or later mythologized as the sole intervener, this story begins to help us understand how Morris approached, in her short time, a life’s worth of activism centered on basic human rights. Or as British photographer Neil Kenlock describes it, Olive’s “fight for equality.”

Olive Morris short biographical note

Download a 1 page pdf with a short biographical note on Olive Morris, written by ROC member Emma Allotey and published by the Remembering Olive Collective.

Olive Morris smiles again on 18 Brixton Hill

Olive Morris’ plaque and photograph have finally been reinstated in Olive Morris House, together with a simple window display facing the street. The window display includes a link to a web page where people can read more about Olive Morris’ life and access our blog for further information. In February 2009 ROC (Remembering Olive Collective) and the Morris family had to resort to write directly to Lambeth Executive Director Derrik Anderson, after council officials failed to respond to continued enquiries about the plaque and the photograph. Both plaque and photograph have been removed well over a year ago, during the refurbishment of the building and its re-branding as Brixton Customer Service Centre.

New window display at 18 Brixton Hill
Photo: ROC (Remembering Olive Collective)

Our letters requested that the Council re-installs the plaque and the photograph in a public area of the building, so that users of the Customer Service Centre could learn who Olive Morris was. We had also submitted a detailed proposal to create a window display with pictures, information and testimonies about Olive Morris life, and made enquiries about the removal of the line “Olive Morris House” from the letterhead of correspondence being issued from the building – now reading simply: Customer Service Centre, 18 Brixton Hill.

After our letters reached the Executive Director and some local Councillors followed up on our enquiries, council officials went into a flurry of activity and the plaque and photograph were soon re-instated to the foyer of the staff entrance, and we received a letter informing us that this had happened. A couple of weeks later a window display was also installed.

ROC interviewed by Nyansapo Radio

Remembering Olive Collective: Phone-in interview with Toyin Agbetu, Head of Social and Economic Policy, for Ligali’s Nyansapo Radio – Tuesday 10 March 2009

On Friday 6 March ROC had a stall inside Brixton Library as part of an event organised to commemorate International Women’s Day (8 March). Emma Allotey, Ana Laura and I were all there and we took it in turns to look after the stall, talk to people about Olive, and sell some of our lovely merchandise.

Our new poster’s arresting image of Olive speaking through a megaphone amongst a crowd of people captured a man’s attention. This man was Toyin Agbetu, founder of Ligali. As he stood there in front of the poster, he wondered about this brave unsung heroin and asked himself how come he had never seen or heard of her before.

Emma did a great job of informing the intrigued Toyin about Olive and her achievements, and he was so impressed that he decided to invite her to be a guest in his next radio show to share the message with a wider audience.

Emma could not do the interview, so she sent an email to the rest of the group asking if someone else (preferably of African descent due to Ligali’s remit – see below) could do it and I -reluctantly- put myself forward and volunteered.

Ligali describe themselves as a “Pan African Human Rights Organisation that challenges the misrepresentation of African people, culture and history in the British Media”. As a way of redressing the balance of power, Ligali produces “Africentric media, and education programmes that actively work for self-determination, socio-political freedom, physical health and spiritual wealth” (see www.ligali.org for more information), hence the importance of having a ROC member of African descent as a guest speaker in their radio programme.

‘Empowering African Women’ was the title of the programme ROC featured in. Dedicated to International Women’s Day, the programme focused on the achievements of African women and discussed the issue of women’s activism. Consequently, the questions posed by Toyin centered around the legacy of Olive Morris as a black female figure, a community activist, and her relevance to the Pan African community -especially women – living in London today.

You can listen back to the programme by visiting Nyansapo’s audio archive

An article about ROC and Olive Morris Project on f word

Tara Atluri reflects on her time with the Olive Morris project as well as her being a part of the Remembering Olive Collective.

Olive would have told me to shut up and do something